What Now? Health Care Reform and Next Steps

To those of you that have been paying attention to NLIRH’s work during the long process to craft and pass health care reform legislation, it might seem as though what was a flurry of action at the end of the year has died down. Behind the scenes, however, we are hard at work. Though many provisions in both the Senate and the House version of the health care reform legislation are deeply flawed, NLIRH is not ready to give up. We are currently developing strategies and materials for the last leg of this struggle, and we are continuing our work both with activists on the ground and our colleagues in the movement to ensure that the merged bill comes out free of provisions that are hurtful to women of color, low-income people, and immigrants.

The Senate and House versions of the bill will be merged soon, but right now it is not clear exactly how that will happen. Though legislation typically enters a conference committee made up of members of both the House and Senate to resolve differences and emerge with a final bill, there is speculation that health care reform will undergo an alternative process in order to avoid Republican stalling tactics.